With a poll coming up on ICM for the best films of 1968,I started checking on '68 titles that were waiting to be watched. Picking it up over Halloween due to the eye-catching title,I decided it was time to meet the snake girl.
View on the film:
Embracing the name of the film, director Noriaki Yuasa & cinematographer Akira Uehara cast a psychedelia atmosphere in sequences that explore Sayuri nightmares with trippy lights that gives sword fights with snakes and floating masked heads an incredibly off-beat vibe. Whilst the title itself is pure pulp,Yuasa wisely limits kitsch for the dream sequences, to instead craft a psychological chiller, with Uehara silky black and white close-ups chipping at the fractured relationship between Sayuri and Tamimi. Wrapping the terror round Sayuri with gruelling smashes against her tiny hands, Yuasa and Uehara gives the family home a claustrophobic appearance with coiled tracking shots revealing Sayuri has nowhere to escape from the snake girl and the witch.
Putting two of Kazuo Kozu's Manga's together,Kimiyuki Hasegawa makes the matching up look seamless, with the stark screams of the dream sequences being painted with the vibrancy of Manga. Unveiling in the beginning that the father is away abroad at work, Hasegawa makes the unsettling horror grounded,with excellently-written dialogue reflecting Tamimi's psychodrama desire to be the lone sister to get attention from mum, and Sayuri's nightmare of all the adults treating her concerns about Tamimi's as fairy tale jealousy.
View on the film:
Embracing the name of the film, director Noriaki Yuasa & cinematographer Akira Uehara cast a psychedelia atmosphere in sequences that explore Sayuri nightmares with trippy lights that gives sword fights with snakes and floating masked heads an incredibly off-beat vibe. Whilst the title itself is pure pulp,Yuasa wisely limits kitsch for the dream sequences, to instead craft a psychological chiller, with Uehara silky black and white close-ups chipping at the fractured relationship between Sayuri and Tamimi. Wrapping the terror round Sayuri with gruelling smashes against her tiny hands, Yuasa and Uehara gives the family home a claustrophobic appearance with coiled tracking shots revealing Sayuri has nowhere to escape from the snake girl and the witch.
Putting two of Kazuo Kozu's Manga's together,Kimiyuki Hasegawa makes the matching up look seamless, with the stark screams of the dream sequences being painted with the vibrancy of Manga. Unveiling in the beginning that the father is away abroad at work, Hasegawa makes the unsettling horror grounded,with excellently-written dialogue reflecting Tamimi's psychodrama desire to be the lone sister to get attention from mum, and Sayuri's nightmare of all the adults treating her concerns about Tamimi's as fairy tale jealousy.